Week in Review

President Obama yielded to the environmentalists in his liberal base on the Keystone XL pipeline. Who opposed it on environmental grounds. Ironic as the environment will be at greater risk if the president doesn’t let them build the pipeline. And to make matters worse the price of gasoline will go up also. Making one of the worst economic recoveries in U.S. history worse. By leaving less money in consumers’ pockets. While at the same time raising the price of everything that uses refined oil to get to market (see Killing Keystone Seen as Risking More Oil Spills by Rail by Rebecca Penty & Jim Efstathiou Jr. posted 4/9/2013 on Bloomberg).

A rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline by President Barack Obama would push more of Canada’s $73 billion oil exports onto trains, which register almost three times more spills than pipelines…

Shipping more supplies by rail would lead to higher costs for oil producers because train shipments are more expensive than pipelines…

Without Keystone, designed to carry 830,000 barrels a day of oil, shipments of Canadian crude by rail would rise an additional 42 percent by 2017, according to RBC Capital Markets.

“One of the unintended consequences of delaying Keystone XL is that more oil has been getting to markets in Canada and the United States using rail, truck and water-borne tankers,” Shawn Howard, a spokesman for TransCanada, said in an e-mail. “None of those methods of transportation are as safe as moving it by pipelines,” he said.

Trains are one of the most efficient ways to transport heavy freight. Bulk freight carriers on the Great Lakes can ship heavy freight cheaper but they don’t travel as fast as trains. And they can only travel on water. A train can travel almost anywhere. Over, under and around bodies of water. Something a ship just can’t do with land. But the benefit of train transport comes with a cost. Rail infrastructure is very costly. And you have to have it wherever a train travels. Unlike a ship. Still, rail is the best way to transport bulk freight. Except that kind of bulk freight that we can push through a pipeline.

To think of the immense advantage of moving things by pipeline consider the hot water in your house when having a bath. Without the pipeline system in your house you would have to heat water outside over a fire. Then carry it in small containers and pour it into your bathtub. Container after container you would have to fill with cold water. Carry it to where you converted it into hot water. Then carry the hot water by foot where you could stumble or fall, spilling your converted cold water. Leaving you a mess to clean up. And the need to burn more fuel to convert more cold water into hot water.

Now imagine having a bath by simply opening the hot water tap at your bathtub and letting it fill your tub. It’s a whole lot easier. Less chance to spill water. And you burn less fuel. So which would you rather do? Clearly moving anything by pipeline is the best way to move anything. You reduce the chance of spills because the only moving part is the oil in the pipeline. And there are no loading and unloading costs to factor into the price of gasoline. As the refineries basically have a hot water tap to turn on when they want to refine oil. It just doesn’t get simpler than that.

Keystone XL pipeline doesn’t put the people or the environment first. Just those people who oppose businesses and capitalism. Who don’t care that people have to spend more to put gasoline into their cars. Or have to spend more at the grocery store thanks to higher fuel costs passed along in higher food prices. For if it were up to them people wouldn’t even have cars. Or enjoy eating anything that came from an animal. That’s the world the environmentalists have in mind for the American people. Where the people sacrifice. So the animals can enjoy a pristine environment. Where they can happily eat each other. And crap all over the place. The way Mother Nature meant it to be. Before God created man. Who the environmentalist hate. And blame for making a mess of everything.